The present invention relates to devices used for wiping burned tissue debris, known as eschar, from a surgical cautery knife blade.
Surgical instruments such as cautery knives, cautery pencils and various other cautery device tips often become soiled with particles of tissue, blood and other debris during a surgical intervention. The accumulation of these materials on the instrument can severely hinder its use. Surgeons must repeatedly wipe the instrument tip with gauze or scrape the tip with a scalpel during surgery. This procedure, however, requires that the surgeon or an assistant interrupt the operation to clean the instrument, using both hands and taking great care to avoid accidental cuts and injury. This cleaning procedure is not only very disruptive to the surgery, but also does not allow for a safe and convenient place to safely dispose of the excess burned tissue debris or eschar.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,547,923, issued to De Vries et al., discloses a surgical knife cleaner consisting essentially of a closely coiled strand supported on a base member bonded by adhesive to a surgical drape. The surgical knife blade is cleaned by insertion through adjacent coils of the device. This type of surgical knife cleaner, however, does not provide sufficient frictional pressure against the sides of the knife blade to completely rid it of eschar debris. Moreover, this type of surgical knife cleaner requires that penetration of the blade through the coil be in a single direction imposed by the orientation of the device.
Other cauterizer blade cleaning devices use sponge-like abrasive material as a wiping surface. After repeated use, eschar debris tends to build up on the abrasive material, thereby reducing its effectiveness and requiring other methods for further cleaning.
There is a need for a more versatile type of surgical instrument cleaner that is accessible from multiple directions, that provides a more thorough wiping action against soiled side of instrument blades, and that provides a means for containing scraped tissue debris for convenient disposal. These problems and deficiencies are clearly felt in the art and are solved by the present invention in the manner described below.